Farewell Slack Space

The volunteer arts group is winding down the formal side of the organisation.

Slack Space is Dead, Long Live Slack Space.

The loose collective of artists, dreamers and ‘cultural hedonists’ has done some bloody good things around Sunny Colch for the past six years.

There was very much an ethos of try it, and then think about the consequences later.

This made it a little difficult to keep track of the many activities that were staged across the various venues.

We’ve seen some hit and miss local art, enjoyed Slack Folk and realised that our best breakdancing days are behind us.

And now Slack Space is coming to a formal close.

Hurrah!

We LOVE the idea of celebrating failure around our patch. There is a little more room to breathe around these parts when compared to the big city.

But Slack Space hasn’t failed – it has grown up; or even grown out of the ideas upon which it was founded.

This consisted of finding an empty space and breathing some cultural life into it.

It worked at the old Shoe World on Queen Street, the empty Co-op Bank along Eld Lane, and more recently the old police station back down Queen Street.

We often got the impression that Slack Space was running away from regeneration. The two Queen Street locations finally look like shaping up to be part of the Cultural Quarter [ha!] in the next 18 months.

There are parallels here with the creative hub at 15 Queen Street and the Waiting Room. Old buildings with no existing purpose find a new direction.

It’s never going to be a 25 year lease, but you are better off just bloody doing it.

Doing ANYTHING.

Slack Space has grown up, and so has the model. We very much doubt that there would be a Creative Business Centre without Slack Space or 15 Queen Street.

The DIY anarchic approach is unlikely to be found at the new 37 Queen Street. You play with the big boys, you have to accept their restrictive rules. It will be interesting to see how the space develops…

But it also allows a little room for Slack Space and the Waiting Room team to continue to explore ideas.

Signing up for a formalised ‘creative’ space is not going to suit the way that some folk go about their creative work.

You find alternatives; you find some new space in which to be slack in…

This town can’t be completely regenerated so that the fun is sucked out, can it?